So Long, and Thanks
by celerity
Summary: A traveller from the Pleiades meets a certain author from the Earth in a bar. Tribute to the late, great Douglas Adams.


Disclaimer: 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and all its related elements belong to the estate of the late Douglas Adams. No profit is being made from their use here, which is meant merely as a tribute. 

I'm hoping this one will explain itself. No disrespect intended here – only a tribute to the writer of the greatest book of our time (in my opinion). Tell me what you think. 

~ Celerity 

'Good…evening…ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to…Hyropodes VI. Local time is…25:66. Our current position is…Jalabra Spaceport. We hope you have enjoyed travelling with Sirius Airlines. Please note: passengers who have not left the craft within three microminutes will be terminated.' 

I throw off the grey plastic harness and stand up groggily, fighting my way through crowd of pushing organisms to what looks like the nearest exit as the toneless computer voice repeats its request. The aftershock of the Barnard Star hyperspace hop, having roughly the same gastro-intestinal consequences as swallowing a blender, are still buzzing around my head as I stagger out, blinking in the sudden light and space. Behind me there is a sizzling noise and a couple of screams as the drowsier passengers meet their fate. The engines fire up noisily and in a sudden blast the spacecraft is gone, and I am alone in a crowd of bizarre people with only my rucksack and a puzzled expression. 

Jalabra Spaceport. Jewel of the Western Spiral. Symbol of Galactic prosperity, and favoured haunt of rich businessmen worldwide. I have to admit the blurb doesn't do it justice - I had expected it would be shoddy. But not as shoddy as this. The floor, some kind of dull ultra-chrome that probably looked very swanky a few millennia ago, stretches out unpolished and scuffed with the boots, suitcases and strange appendages of a thousand alien races. The décor is dismal – the ceiling is reminiscent of greying papier mâché applied with a plastic knife. I consult the pamphlet. 'The famous "Misty Morning" ceilingscape was designed by Galaxy-famous architect Jared Galaphagos, and cost over three thousand Altairian dollars.' _That figures_, I think, and set off down towards where the smell of endearingly artificial food is wafting out of a bright-fronted stall. I buy one Arcturan Megaburger from the disturbingly blue vendor, evade his attempt to start a conversation and escape to the car park. 

After the hustle and bustle of the spaceport, the outside is a surprise. The landscape of the planet is dry and rocky, and any major city is out of sight. I suppose it makes sense that a race with the abominable bad taste to build a spaceport like that would think it amusing to build it in the middle of nowhere. Not for the first time, I feel a stab of guilty regret. What the hell do I think I'm doing here? Back home, people are living their lives like they should, and here I am looking for myself on some godforsaken planet halfway across the Galaxy. I sit down on a handy boulder, after carefully checking for signs of life, and pull out the _Guide_. I hit Recall, and bring up a picture of home. Well, not home exactly – the famous jewelled beach of Pleiades Delta right next to home, to be precise. If I lean in close to the picture I can almost feel the warm purple sand. 

'Taxi?' 

I look up quickly, closing the _Guide_. A tall man leans over me. He appears roughly humanoid, although his arms seem a little long for his body. 

'I'm sorry?' 

'You want taxi?' I look blank, still groggy from the journey. He taps his ear fiercely with a long finger. 'You have Babel fish?' 

I catch up. 'Oh, yeah,' I say, standing up and trying to ignore the sudden rush of blood from my head. 'Taxi.' 

The driver eyes me suspiciously for a moment as though he doubts my ability to hand him all my money, then sets off wordless, gangling and stooped across the stone-cluttered orange-brown expanse. Assuming I'm supposed to follow him, I traipse after, passing dust-shrouded craft that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Out of the corner of my eye I even spot one that resembles an upside-down restaurant, but when I turn round to look at it there is only the shimmering heat-haze. 

We walk for a considerable distance. The sun is baking hot and the sweltering atmosphere is doing nothing to help my creeping spacelag. Finally we come to a small, rounded shape thickly coated with the sandy dust. 'My car,' the driver announces without ceremony and flicks a switch on his handset. A door slides jerkily open and he gestures vaguely to the back compartment, a poky box with one grease-stained window and unidentifiable crumbs lining the seat. I regard it sceptically. It's not nice, but neither is the idea of a long hike through the desert. 

'How much?' I ask him, squinting up at his silhouetted face. 

'We negotiate,' he says, and I shrug and step in, almost taking my head off on the frame. I settle into the shabby black seat, rubbing the window ineffectually with my hand. As the door closes and we move off, I observe that the landscape is as boring from inside as it is outside. 

'Where you want to go?' asks the driver, his heavy-browed eyes reflected in the mirror. I can't quite understand everything he says. Maybe my Babel fish is suffering from spacelag too. 

The question is one I haven't considered. But one overwhelming need cuts through the haze. 'Drink,' I say, rather incoherently. 

'What?' 

'Drink. Take me the nearest place I can get a drink.' 

'OK.' The car zooms forward faster, scooting happily over a small hillock and sending my already suffering stomach into further ecstasies of knottiness. I clutch the arm of the seat, pressing my lips tightly together. 

The journey is mercifully quite short. Before I have time to add to the mess on the back seat we have pulled up outside a small building, only a vague shape through the fogged glass. 

The driver holds out his hand expectantly. I dig into my bag and leaf out a few notes, not really caring how much, just wanting to get out of the stuffy car. He grabs them eagerly, counts them, nods briefly and opens the door. I thank him and step out into bright sunlight glazing off the rocky plain. The little car roars and, raising a huge cloud of dust, coasts off into the distance. I watch it until it is a tiny speck, then turn around to see where I have ended up. 

The building itself is small with a kind of rickety air about it, although this is slightly undermined by the presence of a large plastic billboard bearing a picture of a large two-headed cowboy saying something which according to my phrasebook translates as: Don't Enforce Drought On Your Own Body, Partake of Bill's Sweet Nectar! I take his word for it and make my way to the swinging double doors to push them open. 

It is mercifully cooler inside that out, and darker to the extent that I have to blink a few times to adjust. When I have I can see that the place is crowded, packed with creatures whose varying and somewhat surprising appearances make me feel very insecure as I walk in the sudden silence up to the bar. The proprietor, a thick-set man with a Perspex breathing tube descending from his nose, is cleaning a glass with a strangely menacing motion. I clear my throat, swaying with returning sickness. 

'A Golgafrinchan Tonic,' I say hoarsely. 

He glares at me mistrustfully for a moment, then turns reluctantly and begins to mix the drink. I take the opportunity of looking around. Apart from the varied and hostile-looking clientele, there is also an assortment of unsurprisingly boring landscape postcards hanging above the bar, a few inebriated aliens propping it up, and a guy in the corner with extravagant hair and a strange-looking stringed instrument singing something indistinguishable. 

The barman plonks the drink unceremoniously in front of me, and I push some notes towards him. He looks so murderous that I mumble, 'Keep the change,' and turn around hastily to be confronted with the fresh problem of where to sit. 

On either side are tables filled with…well…aliens. A – male? female? creature with strange facial appendages beckons me to an empty place. I hurry past, pretending not to see. I am faced with the a choice of two drinking companions – a blue fish-like creature with three arms and her head in an upside-down bowl, and an ordinary-looking man whose only abnormality seems to be a habit of quickly closing his eyes every so often. I make for his table, deciding I would rather sit with someone who at least has the same number of essential organs as I do. He smiles amiably as I approach, and I sit down a little awkwardly opposite him. His drink appears to be some kind of frothy brown water in a tall fat glass. 

'Hello,' he says. 

'Hi,' I reply, taking a deep gulp of my drink. The sharp tonic buzzes through me, lifting a little of the spacelagged haze. 

'Rough journey?' he asks, amused. 

'I love space travel,' I say, sincerely. 'But I feel like someone just shoved a stick down my throat and started stirring.' 

He laughs, not unsympathetically, and nods. I feel suddenly more at ease. 

'Whereabouts are you from?' he asks. 

'Pleiades Delta,' I say, digging the _Guide_ out of my bag and opening it. I tap a few buttons, and the picture comes up. 'Near there,' I say. 

'Ah, the Diamond Beach,' he says, grinning. 'One of my favourites.' 

'Where are _you_ from?' 

'I'm from a planet called the Earth.' 

I look clueless. 

He laughs, as though this isn't a surprise. 'Unfashionable end of the Western Spiral,' he says. 'Here, take a look.' 

He types something into the _Guide_ and turns it around, revealing a picture of some green rolling countryside. I stare at it. 

'It's nice,' I say, more to be polite than anything else. It looks like a dump to me. He turns the _Guide_ back and looks at the picture for a while, a trace of sadness on his face. I'm suddenly glad I didn't tell him what I really thought. 

'So, what are you doing here?' 

'Me?' He smiles. 'Well, I write books, and movies for tri-D. And you could say I'm an unofficial researcher for the _Guide_.' He jerks a thumb over to the guy singing in the corner. 'But I only really come here to see him. He used to be big on my planet, a while back.' 

I look over, and listen for a moment. The man shakes wildly as though in the grip of some kind of pelvic spasm. His voice is low, but I can makes out through the conversation that he is mumbling about some species of canine. _Each to their own_, I think, trying not to show my bafflement. 

'What about you?' he asks, turning back. 

I'm not really sure what to say. 'I'm…I don't know.' 

He doesn't seem surprised. 'Don't worry about it. If I'm honest, neither do I. In fact, very few people do.' 

It seems like a bizarre statement, but in some strange way it's comforting. I take another sip of my drink, and shiver. 

'It's just…' I pause. I'm telling an alien stranger my life problems. He takes another gulp of his brown water, and I decide to go for it. 'Everyone at home wants me to start settling down, but I –' I tap the cover of the _Guide_, smiling.'I want to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day.' 

He laughs, and nods. Somewhere behind him, a large spiky lizard being has got into an arm-wrestling match with a dwarf. There is the sudden crashing of glasses and a loud curse, and I look to the ceiling, sighing. 

'I just sometimes wonder what it all means. Life. The Universe. Everything.' 

He grins. 'Believe it or not, that's a question that's been troubling great minds for a good while now.' He leans forward a little, adopting a conspiratorial tone. 'Have you ever seen God's Final Message To His Creation?' 

I am taken aback. 'I don't believe in God.' 

'That doesn't matter,' he says, producing a pen from his pocket and scribbling something on the back of a faded beer mat. He hands it to me, smiling. 'I think you'll find it makes a lot of sense. And if it doesn't, there's still some great fudge you can buy along the way.' 

I take the mat and examine it, reading: Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, Sevorbeupstry, Preliumtarn, Zarss, Sector QQ7 Active J Gamma. I turn it around in my hands for a moment, thinking. 

'So where are you headed next?' 

He smiles. 'Santraginus V. I thought I'd take in a bit of sea air.' 

'Good idea.' I take a last gulp of my drink. The barman begins to regard me in a rather menacing fashion, and I decide that it is time to move on. I get up. 

'So long,' I say to the bizarre man as I pick up my bag and sling it over my back. Walking to the door I am struck by a thought. I turn round. 

'Oh…and thanks,' I say, not insincerely, waving the beer mat. 

He raises his glass, grinning, and I leave. 


End file.
